Kiki Petrosino is the author of four books of poetry: White Blood (2020); Witch Wife (2017); Hymn for the Black Terrific (2013); and Fort Red Border (2009)—all from Sarabande Books. She holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. Her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Best American Poetry, The Nation, The New York Times, FENCE, Gulf Coast, Jubilat, Tin House, and online at Ploughshares. Previously Director of Creative Writing at the University of Louisville, she now teaches at the University of Virginia as a Professor of Poetry. Petrosino is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Fellowship in Creative Writing from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an Al Smith Fellowship Award from the Kentucky Arts Council. She lives in Charlottesville.

PRAISE FOR WHITE BLOOD:

"'I’m a black body in this Commonwealth, which turned black bodies / into money,' Petrosino writes in her fourth book, eyeing race, history, genetics and hope through the crucible of Virginia."
—The New York Times Book Review, print, “New and Noteworthy”

"This is an important and remarkable exploration of heritage."
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"The result of deep historical research, impressive formal dexterity, and savvy storytelling, this volume of poetry combines genealogy, history, and verse in a way that reflects many American experiences." 
—Foreword Reviews

"These poems candidly tackle questions of identity, historical injustice, and suffering while suggesting the possibility of greater understanding through scientific innovation."
—Publishers Weekly, “Spring 2020 Announcements, Top 10”

"Another ambitious volume from Petrosino."
—The Millions, “Must-Read Poetry: May 2020”

“Petrosino composes poems that burn and sizzle, that pierce the reader with their masterful crafting and heightened vulnerability; she breaks open and digs into bother her personal past, where she ‘grew like a braid / in bad light,’ as well as American society’s ‘throb-in-throat’ past.”
—Poets & Writers, “Between Worlds: A Q&A with Poet Kiki Petrosino”

"The collection has a searching, yearning momentum that is cut by the wry intellect of a speaker who knows her pursuit of historical meaning remains subject to the same colonial forces that influenced the lives of her ancestors."
—Harvard Review

"Petrosino showcases her mastery of form."
—The Arkansas International

"White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia, is deeply personal, exploring the genealogy and legacy of her African-American ancestors in Virginia. At the same time, [Petrosino] grapples with the messy history of slavery and discrimination in America, and of the sometimes difficult, often abiding choices that families of every stripe have to make. It’s part of Petrosino’s unique ability as a poet to capture the expansive within the intimate, the ungainly within precise poetic forms."
—"Art Talk with NEA Literature Fellow Kiki Petrosino" by Rebecca Sutton, National Endowment for the Arts

"[T]he ever-popular Kiki Petrosino excavates her roots to understand the impact of slavery and discrimination in the Upper South."
—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

"It would be folly to overlook Kiki Petrosino’s White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia on a list of environmentally-focused books. I can’t read about the landscape of Virginia and the Upper South (which Petrosino vividly describes) and not think about the blood and sweat soaked into that soil. Petrosino’s exacting eye challenges reductive and redacted narratives of her native place. In this wondrously innovative collection, she renews understandings about what has grown up from that land."
—"Twelve Poetry Recommendations for Black History Month" by Camille T. Dungy, Orion Magazine

“Merg[es] fierce intelligence with sharp music.”
—Rhino, Review

"Petrosino erases stereotypes and misplaced certainty with the fractured and fragmented truths of what it means to live in the wake of ancestors who suffered and afflicted, who might be imagined to be redeemed or relieved or most certainly damned."
—"Building an Archive of Earth and Water: New Poetry That Excavates the Past to Imagine a Future" by Kathryn Nuernberger, West Branch

"There is such a lovely, clean precision to Petrosino’s lines."
—Rob McClennan, Periodicities

“Looking at the moment where we are in our nation’s history, we’re at this point of transformation — trying to take account and responsibility for our past and to remake our country. And we look at poets like Kiki to see how all of us can do that.”
—Lisa Roberts in "Iowa City Poetry launches ‘Two Voices’ interview series," The Daily Iowan

"Her collection exemplifies the power of prose to reckon with our past and understand our future."
—The Denton Record-Chronicle, online

“Kiki Petrosino has been perfecting a form of weaponized valentine, a love poem armed with play and appraisal, ever since her amazing debut. Her poems charm and fillet. In White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia home is filled with history and possibility, ‘that twoness one ever feels’ in place and body. Both singular lyric poem and mercurial sequence featuring epistles, erasures, and sonnets, this book is wonderfully irreducible. It’s further evidence of Kiki Petrosino’s limitless, inimitable talent.”
—Terrance Hayes, author of American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin and Lighthead

“Fueled by what it means to identify your own blood, White Blood is a masterful book of poems that excavates, resurrects, and stares clear-eyed into history. Petrosino's intricate attention to sound and the muscularity of the poetic line make these poems explode in both the ear and the heart. Here is a poet at her best.” 
—Ada Limón, author of The Carrying and Bright Dead Things

“In this meditation, Petrosino unlocks the history of Virginia and its racial intersections. White Blood is a magical collection, and Petrosino leads the reader through the geography of her origin with reverence. What does this body have to say of a Commonwealth never designed to include it? This voice has escaped alone to sing to us.”
—T.J. Jarrett, author of Zion and Ain’t No Grave

PAST PRAISE FOR KIKI PETROSINO:

"Petrosino is a canny, wide-ranging and formally nimble writer with a magician's command of atmosphere."
—The New York Times, "The Best Poetry of 2017"

“[Kiki Petrosino’s poetry] is a vision of anger as fuel and fire, as a powerful inoculation against passivity, as strange but holy milk suckled from the wolf.”
—Leslie Jamison, The New York Times

"Petrosino. . . crackles in her stunning third collection."
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“In Petrosino’s singular world, the familiar becomes strange, and the strange, suddenly irresistible, settles deep in the bones. . . . Utterly spellbinding.”
—Booklist

"Petrosino writes complicated, layered poems, rife with internal rhymes and echoes of assonance...A fine addition to large poetry collections." 
—Library Journal

"This stunning spellbook on love, being a woman in all phases of life, motherhood, and inhabiting the female body will cast a spell on you." 
—Barnes & Noble

"Witch Wife offers that maybe all love stories are stories of bodies. We are within before we are without. Petrosino is a unique voice, churning a mixture of smirk and mirth. . . Witch Wife is a weird wonder, something altogether new in its combinations." 
—The Millions, "Must-Read Poetry: December 2017"